LibraryBuzz – Page 2 – News from the City Tech Library
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This year, the African American Studies department will celebrate Black History Month with a focus on Food and the African Diaspora.
They will host a food tasting in partnership with the Hospitality Department.
This month, in the spirit of celebrating Black History Month and supporting the theme of Food and the African Diaspora, the library’s window display features selections from our extensive menu collection alongside a portion of food and food history related books from the library’s collection.
Students examined how recipes and farming are central to Black foodways throughout the African Diaspora in Dr. Effinger-Crichlow’s AFR 3000ID: Black New York sections in Fall 2025. For part of an assignment, students were instructed to “reflect upon how a specific foodway is part of your life in New York City… Is this foodway a culinary tradition like a recipe within or outside your family, and is it a brief excerpt from your memoir?”
The menu collection, a donation from
“Arthur Schwartz…restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News for 18 years”
resides in both the library stacks and archives. In addition to menus from around the world, we have a selection of personal papers and ephemera from his long career.
Image: Adapted from “Stephanie Fuller and Abby Butcher at Ditchling Feminist Wiki Editathon Oct 2019,” Molly Fuller Abbott, CC BY-SA 4.0
Join us at City Tech to explore Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and more during the Spring 2026 semester.
Coming up on March 13th: a 30-minute online
Introduction to Wikimedia Commons
. We’ll explore how images from Wikimedia Commons can be used for teaching or in student assignments, as well as how individuals can contribute to Wikimedia Commons.
Read more and register at this link.
Join City Tech Library and the Pride Club for an
LGBTQIA+ Wikipedia Editathon
on March 26th from 12:45-2:15pm. After a short training session we’ll work on Wikipedia articles about LGBTQIA+ topics related to CUNY, New York City, and beyond. Food will be served!
Read more and register at this link.
Do you love CUNY history? Join us on April 16th at City Tech Library for
Archives+CUNY+Wikipedia
. We’ll use CUNY’s rich archival resources for editing Wikipedia.
Learn more and register to attend at this link.
The CUNY Immigration Assistance Project is holding a Zoom session on
Thursday, February 26
at 6PM.
For more information visit the
CIAP
site.
Update:
The library will also be closed on Tuesday, February 24th.
Due to the blizzard, the college and library will be closed on Monday, February 23rd.
Welcome to a (still) rather new semester. And welcome to all of our new students and faculty.
Need a book, a quiet place to study or work on a project, or research help?
Come visit us on the 4th floor of the Library building Mondays-Thursdays from 9am-9pm, Fridays from 9am-7pm, and Saturdays 10am-3pm.
Learning or teaching online? We’ve still got you covered.
Get virtual help 24X7
If you’re off campus or up late working on a project and need help
Just Ask us!
You can chat with (real human!) CUNY Librarians on weekdays and librarians from other institutions on evenings and weekends.
Access Library Resources from Off-Campus
Use your CUNY login to access library databases, research articles, movies, and ebooks from off campus. Login to “My Library Account” on the library website to see your loans, renew books, and check on requests for books from other CUNY campuses.
If your preferred name isn’t associated with your library account,
you can change that
Maybe you didn’t already know…
City Tech students, faculty, and staff have free access to the
New York Times
and
Wall Street Journal
! Use your City Tech email to sign up (or renew your subscription).
The library lends
podcasting equipment
! Check out a podcasting kit from our multimedia lab. And while you’re at it…check out one of our
portable turntables
and our extensive vinyl record collection.
Course Reserves
You can place textbooks and required readings for your courses in the Library’s Reserve Collection for your students to use in the library.
Please place your requests as soon as possible as we purchase on a first-come, first-served basis. Request materials to be placed on reserve using this
form
Questions? Email us:
NYCCTCirculation@citytech.cuny.edu
Need Something We Don’t Have?
CUNY students, faculty, and staff can request books from other CUNY AND State University of New York (SUNY) Libraries! Through this partnership with SUNY, the CUNY community has access to over 12 million items from 52 campuses. Deliveries take 3 to 15 business days.
Ask a City Tech librarian or chat with us if you need help requesting something from another library.
Faculty, staff, and students can also request physical books not available at CUNY or SUNY through
Interlibrary loan
(ILL). We are also continuing to fill article and individual book chapter requests and deliver them electronically. ILL is great for scholarly research and course assignments. We can also request multimedia materials and have a new reader for research on microfilm!
Your CUNY login is connected to your ILL account, so you’ll have one less password to remember! Questions? Email us:
interlibraryloan@citytech.cuny.edu
Library Instruction Offerings
Are you assigning papers or projects that require library research? You can
request a library instruction session
for your class. We also offer research guides to support asynchronous courses and for students who want to learn at their own pace.
Contact your
library subject specialist
to find out more about support for your asynchronous class. For general questions about library instruction, contact
Prof. Anne Leonard
, library instruction coordinator.
We’re editing Wikipedia!
Did you know that CUNY has a
Wikimedian in Residence
? City Tech Library is so excited to use this support for wiki work on campus. We’re organizing a series of events related to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other Wikiprojects this year, through support from the Wikimedia Foundation. Visit
cityte.ch/wiki
to check out what we’ve planned. Up next on our calendars: NYC’s
Wikipedia Day is at City Tech
in March, and an
Archives+CUNY+Wikipedia
editathon in April!
Open Educational Resources
Identify open and free resources to support teaching, browse your colleagues’ contributions, and much more via the
OER at City Tech site
. Follow our blog for
New & Noteworthy OER
available in your discipline.
Questions about seeking funding to create OER, assigning OER and other zero-cost resources? Contact
Prof. Cailean Cooney
, OER coordinator.
Faculty Workshop: Information Literacy in your discipline
Date and Time: Tuesday, February 24, 3PM – 4PM
Register online!
by February 23 to participate
Workshop participants will brainstorm and draft a brief information literacy manifesto that articulates the priorities for ethical information use, essential research skills, and information discovery in their field. This working document will guide curriculum development and help students understand discipline-specific expectations for information literacy.
Participants are encouraged to bring questions to the workshop.
Part-time faculty
who participate will be
compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate
for attending.
Questions? Please contact Anne Leonard, Information Literacy Coordinator.
Support for Scholarly Publishing
The library can support your research and help you throughout the publication lifecycle!
We offer a workshop series every semester. This spring, we’ll offer our usual workshop to help you find data and other evidence for your PARSE,
Get Evidence! on March 31, 1:00-2:00 PM.
Registration
Want to save time and energy on your literature review? Come to our
Get Organized: Zotero Basics
May 6, 12-1:30 PM)
Zotero
is software that helps you manage your citations and more.
Registration
In addition to our
Scholarly Publishing Clinic
, a monthly office hour for virtual consultations on the first Tuesday of the month at 3 PM, consultations are available on demand
Contact Prof. Monica Berger
to set up a consultation and
learn more about how the library supports scholarly publishing.
Showcasing Student Work
Calling all student artists and makers!
The library is creating more spaces to showcase student creative work and projects with visual components. We have several vertical display cases near our entrance as well as a flat glass-top display case, poster stands, a digital monitor for still images, and an active social media presence. We are also open to creatively repurposing other underutilized spaces in the library for larger scale projects. Projects in all disciplines are welcome.
Students and faculty with ideas for showcasing student work or for collaborative programming can reach out to
Prof. Nora Almeida
, Outreach Librarian.
Don’t Be a Stranger
Have questions about library resources and services but not sure how to reach us? Want to make sure you get the latest updates about changing policies, new resources, and digital tools available through the library?
Subscribe to the
LibraryBuzz blog
to get the latest in your inbox or follow us on
Bluesky
and
@citytechlibrary
This faculty workshop series kicks off on February 24 with an exploration of what discipline-informed information literacy looks like. The next workshop, on March 12, will prepare participants to fine-tune an existing assignment or classroom activity to improve student research outcomes. On March 24, participants will explore resources for teaching about misinformation and disinformation. Registration details coming soon!
Part-time faculty
who participate will be
compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate
for attending.
Information literacy in your discipline
| February 24, 3pm-4pm |
in advance
Through discussion and prompted writing, workshop participants explore the information practices of their field or discipline. By identifying discipline-informed essential research skills and information evaluation criteria, participants clarify the information priorities of their discipline. Workshop participants will brainstorm and draft a brief information literacy manifesto that articulates the priorities for ethical information use, essential research skills, and information discovery in their field. This working document will guide curriculum development and help students understand discipline-specific expectations for information literacy.
Please register
by February 23 on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Participants are encouraged to bring questions to the workshop.
Questions? Please contact
Anne Leonard
, Information Literacy Coordinator at
City Tech Library
Join student activists and educators for Higher Education Action Day on February 25th. This is an opportunity to directly talk to state legislators about the need for more affordable tuition and more funding to support your educational experience. NYPIRG (local organizers with an office on campus) will provide free buses up to Albany for a 1 day trip.
Here is more
information about the event and registration details
Every voice matters!
The library will be open December 22-23 from 9am to 5pm.
The library will be closed from December 24th – January 1st.
We will re-open on January 2nd at 9am to 5pm.
Enjoy the holiday break!
Wikipedia Day is an annual celebration of Wikipedia’s birthday, and in 2026 this online encyclopedia turns 25. City Tech Library is thrilled to be working with Wikimedia NYC to host this celebration at City Tech.
Weather forced us to reschedule, and we’re now looking forward to this event on March 28, 2026.
Register now on eventbrite to attend!
Together we will explore the past, present, and future of the free knowledge movement, and celebrate all the people, communities and ideas that make Wikipedia possible. The day will include keynote speakers, family friendly activities, lightning talks, great food, and much more.
Read more about what to expect, registration requirements, and the code of conduct on the event page.
Interested in helping out? We’d love more volunteers!
Sign up to volunteer on this form
This fall, students in Professor Robin Michals’ Photography I class have been contributing images to
Wikimedia Commons
with support from CUNY’s
Wikimedia in Residence
, Richard Knipel. We are so excited to see their work online!
All their photo uploads can be explored on the
Contributions from Communication Design students, CUNY City Tech
category page. In addition to being available on the Commons under Creative Commons licenses, it’s exciting to see these already being incorporated into wikidata items and wikipedia articles in various languages.
A screenshot of the Wikimedia Commons page for “Contributions from Communication Design students, CUNY City Tech”
I visited one of their classes to chat with them about the impact of their contributions to Wikimedia Commons and to hear their thoughts on the images they added. Check out some student reflections on their images below:
Kylan04, CC BY-SA 4.0
Of
Fort Greene Park in
Autumn
, Kylan Whittaker explained, “My mom used to take me there a lot when I was a kid, so I made a lot of good memories in that park.”
Photonatomist 00, CC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia user Photonatomist explained that
Crotona Park Pond
is “vast” and feels like “a calm place to be.”
Gsnur3, CC BY-SA 4.0
Nurcan Akca says of
I.S.125 Thomas J. McCann Intermediate School
: It was my middle school!
JAMMIN8905!, CC BY-SA 4.0
Rodrigue says of
Canarsie Skate Park
: “That place is special because it’s close to home and it’s a large place where friends and family can come together to have fun. “
When I asked students what it means to them that their work is now on Wikimedia Commons, they had a few more thoughts to share:
To me it feels nice that I can share a part of my life to others and basically create an invitation to others to have similar experiences as me.
It makes me proud knowing that my work is being used in Wikipedia commons. It scales out my work and makes me really grasp how impactful my photography can be.
I’m famous!
About this blog
This is the news blog for the Ursula C. Schwerin Library of the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.
The City Tech Library believes in free speech, academic freedom, and the autonomy of library faculty as scholars. The views and opinions expressed on individual blog posts are strictly of their authors.
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